For many years carpenters, sheet-rockers, auto body sanders, tapers, etc. have attempted to cope with the problem of disposing conveniently of the remains of a sanding operation. Of course, a sanding operation typically ends with a large volume of sanding remains in the work area, both on the work surface and in the air. For many years, one of the common methods of disposing of the sanding remains related to a separate, after-operation vacuuming process for the work surface and the floor around the work surface. For this purpose, a large variety of "industrial-strength" vacuum systems have been designed and developed. After all, the vacuum system had to cope with more than the usual dust and the like found in the home environment. Most importantly, such "industrial-strength" vacuum systems did a fine job on the work surface and other proximate surfaces, but did nothing for the sanding remains spread throughout the air in the work place. Commonly, this subjected the person doing the sanding to lung and other health hazards, both during the sanding operation and thereafter.
More recently, inventors such as Shaw, U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,155 have developed methods and apparatus which involve a plurality of holes in a sanding plate underlying the sand paper, which was designed with a porous material. In this way, the sanding remains are vacuumed during the sanding operation into a vacuum plenum, and this prevents, for the most part, the dispersing of sanding remains into the air of the work place. However, the pattern of openings to the plenum and vacuum system in the underlying plate prove less efficient than it could be in gathering all of the sanding remains as the sanding operation proceeds. Also, the plenum tends to clog up.
Similarly, Taranto, U.S. Pat. No. 4,937,984 issued on Jul. 3, 1990, designed a similar, but square hole pattern for the underlying plate.
All of these systems, exemplified by Shaw and Taranto, do not present an apparatus for the purpose of cleaning sanding remains, which proves to be as simple, efficient and convenient as the present invention. Also, the construction is different.